The law will have a global impact, especially as other countries adopt similar restrictions. China's version, for instance, is due to take effect next year. Since manufacturers don't want to run two assembly lines, one spewing out electronic components with lead and the other lead-free, U.S. customers will also get lead-free IT equipment, vendors and industry consultants said.

For IT users, there is the possibility that some vendors may accelerate product end-of-life announcements, and putting RoHS-compliant parts into production systems may require testing in some cases. Although some vendors and consultants are advising users to ask suppliers about their RoHS compliance plans, the issue has not been getting much attention in the U.S.

But Robert Rosen, CIO of the National Institute of Arthritis, Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases at the U.S. National Institutes of Health and president of the IBM user group Share, sees little IT impact from RoHS for users. While there may be some "spot issues" created for IT, they'll be minor, Rosen said. The PCs he is using from Dell Inc. are RoHS compliant and there have been no issues with them. As he sees it, the effort to remove the hazardous substances is a good one. "From an environmental standpoint it's a no brainer," he said.

Similarly, Bill Morgan, CIO at Philadelphia Stock Exchange Inc., sees RoHS compliance as "more of a problem for the computer manufacturer than for the end user like us."

The stock exchange is a heavy user of Sun Microsystems Inc. systems and because Sun offers such a wide variety of products, "we will have choices even if some older non-compliant products are discontinued by Sun," Morgan said. The newer Sun equipment purchased by the exchange is compliant with the environmental law, and he didn't see much of an issue for his company from the law.